The Notorious B.I.G. – aka Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Big Poppa – only released one album during his lifetime. His second, “Life After Death,” would hit stands 16 days after the rapper was murdered while driving in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997.

That Biggie’s career was relatively brief - beginning in 1992 when he signed to Sean “Puffy” Combs’ upstart Bad Boy Records and really taking flight with the release of the 1994 debut “Ready to Die” - certainly hasn’t hurt his standings in the rap game. Even from beyond the grave, Smalls has remained a huge presence in hip-hop and, indeed, has managed to transcend the genre and become an overall pop culture icon.

Poppa’s big, round face still stares out at us from magazine covers; his vocals and songs are routinely sampled/utilized by other artists (from Ashanti to Michael Jackson); new Notorious B.I.G. mix-tapes and compilations are offered up to the market place, serving to recruit new members to the church of Wallace; his two main albums continue to post strong catalog sales numbers; and his name is mentioned from the stage, with complete reverence, at seemingly every hip-hop concert performed.

Now, Biggie mania should get even bigger as the rapper’s life story is told in the major new motion picture “Notorious,” which hits theaters on Friday. That’s great news for B.I.G. fans, who always believed that their hero’s tale was ripe for the cinema, and the even better news is the end result is quite good. The film stars impressive newcomer, Brooklyn rapper Jamal “Gravy” Woolard, in the title role; a fine ensemble cast highlighted by Angela Bassett (who plays Small’s mother, Voletta Wallace) and Naturi Naughton (as Lil’ Kim); and, most significantly, it seems to get more things right than it does wrong.

There are many reasons why Biggie remains so popular nearly 12 years after his death, and why “Notorious” has a good chance at reaping box-office gold against stiff competition this weekend, but let’s start with the obvious: This guy had tons of talent.

He’s commonly referenced as “one of the greatest rappers of all time” and, in some taste-makers’ books, as the finest MC to ever spit into a microphone. A simple scan of the rapper’s page on Wikipedia.com tells the story: Source and Blender magazines both named Biggie the best rapper ever, MTV ranked him at No. 3 on its list of “Greatest MC’s of all Time,” etc. Listen to “Ready to Die,” in particular, and you might understand why.

“The significant thing about `Ready to Die’ is not only that it showcased Biggie's cleverness and acumen as a lyricist, but he had an incredible grasp of how to evoke the visual through his words,” remarks Oliver Wang, the co-author of “Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide.” “You not only heard how his songs unfolded, you `saw’ them as well.”

Others would say that Biggie, who died at 24, didn’t remain in the game long enough, or deliver enough material, to place him on hip-hop’s all-time all-star team. Sure, he got off to a phenomenal start, the argument goes, but what would he have done for a third or fourth album? Ironically, that big question mark has only fueled his posthumous stardom.

“Popular culture is haunted by those who died `too young’ because there is always the lingering, unanswerable question of how great they might have become had they lived - think of James Dean, Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain for example,” Wang says. “Hip-hop has Tupac (Shakur) and Biggie: artists who died at the height of their fame but possibly before their prime. I think our fascination around them comes with wanting to know what they could have achieved but obviously, we'll never know.”

What we do know about Tupac and Biggie is that their tales intertwine, together forming a bizarrely fascinating and sad hip-hop legend that seems to sample Greek tragedy. The storyline, which is addressed at length in “Notorious,” starts with friendship, then, because of an alleged misunderstanding, becomes a bloody feud involving families – with Brooklyn’s Biggie representing the East and Tupac riding for the West.

The storyline would be seized by the media, which pumped up the whole “East Coast-West Coast” rivalry into the defining hip-hop drama of the ‘90s. The tale ended badly, on both sides, with the murders of Biggie and 2Pac, who died at 25 on Sept. 13, 1996.The lingering conspiracy theories, most of which link the two murders as retaliatory statements in the East Coast/West Coast war, have only further fueled the sense of mystique. Add in the fact that there has been no closure, in that both cases remain unsolved, and it’s no wonder that this story continues to fascinate.

“All those dynamics, taken together, have elevated each man's mythology beyond anything comparable in popular culture,” Wang says. “As far as tragedies goes, it's practically Kennedy-ian in its impact on the popular psyche of hip-hop fans.”